


Usamamo One-Word Prompts

by smokingbomber



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, Crystal Tokyo Era, Drama, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Mamousa, Modern Era, No Beta, One Word Prompts, Random & Short, Silver Millennium Era, Wordvom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-05 20:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15178253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokingbomber/pseuds/smokingbomber
Summary: To get myself in gear to write Usamamo for my 2018 minibang fic where I have to write a giant Usamamo scene and I'm out of practice, I asked caffeineivore to gimme a series of random words as prompts. These are the totally unedited wordvom results of that.





	1. hydrangea

"Hydrant," said Usagi firmly.

"You can't just use the first two syllables and gloss the rest, Usako," said Mamoru, sitting back and pinching the bridge of his nose. "It's got one more syllable."

"But syllables are stupid! The number of letters in them changes!" Usagi protested, temper bubbling underneath the whinge.

"One more syllable."

"Hy-drang-ghee-ah?"

"No, this is the usual case of an 'e' after a 'g' making the 'g' soft, so it's 'gee' instead of 'ghee'. And the 'ng' isn't the aggravating diphthong here, so you don't have to worry about that. That syllable stops with the 'n'..."

Mamoru was leaning over Usagi's shoulder, pointing the clusters of letters out as he spoke, low and earnest now that he was getting the chance to be a nerd, and it was very very distracting. Usagi did her best to focus, but he was so close, and his voice was so lovely, and he smelled so nice--

"...so it's hy-DRAIN-juh..." Mamoru was saying, and then looked down at her only to see wide blue eyes staring dreamily at him. He blinked, then started to look frustrated again. "Usa, are you even listening?"

"Hy-DRAIN-juh," Usagi said with a happy sigh, clasping her hands to her chest and smiling at him.

He couldn't even begin to get mad. "Just--" he started, leaning in, and saying the last against her lips, "don't forget in class, Odango Atama."

Somehow he was surprised when he got shoved instead of kissed.


	2. heat

"There's no heat in it, Mamo-chan."

Usagi was sprawled upside-down-ish on the lawn with her head next to Mamoru's lap and her long legs stretched up against the tree trunk, lecturing her boyfriend with an ice cream sandwich. She licked up the side of it decisively and eyed him.

Mamoru looked down at her absurdly cute rounded face, and couldn't help reaching to run his fingertips down the side of it. So she licked his finger and then pointed at him with the precarious ice cream. "It doesn't. I know it's smoking but it doesn't really, does it? And there's not any heat! Nothing gets slagged, like Rei-chan's attacks do to things. Nothing melts or gets scorched, and there *isn't even any smoke*. You just *call* it that, like I just call the big whomp with the tiere 'starlight honeymoon therapy kiss'. None of those things are in it."

"Except arguably therapy," Mamoru observed, then licked his finger *at* Usagi and grinned.

She blushed and turned her face away, nose lifted. "Secondhand kisses are not involved in the attack either," she told him disapprovingly, then bit her sandwich. Some of the ice cream melted out the side, squished by the bite, and dripped on her face.

That meant that the next thing she knew, Mamoru was leaning over her and licking *that* off. "Thank you," he whispered as all the heat that was *not* in Tuxedo la Smoking Bomber pooled in her face at once, "for not wearing makeup. Does all foundation taste awful or just the stuff you put on sometimes?"

Usagi whacked him ineffectually with the back of her hand flailing at his chest somehow, and scrunched up her nose at him. "Stop being sexy and then ruining it by being a jerk. It's too hot out to wear makeup it gets sticky and gross and comes off too easily and-- THAT'S MY ICE CREAM! SUPER-JERK!"


	3. lace

Clouds of chiffon and tulle and lace floated around him, and at their center, someone brighter than all of it put together, someone nearly too bright to see. He clasped her hands, fingers laced through each other and palms pressed, and he tried to focus on the words being spoken, but all he could see was white and her, and all he could feel was her joy and the itchy and ticklish fabric of her gown, and all he could hear was her heart beating in time with his and calling his name.

Then he noticed there was silence, and he looked up in alarm. Something was expected of him, and he was utterly poleaxed.

Usagi leaned in and got on tiptoes, angelic face turned up toward him and half-obscured by her veil, and she was smiling-- and then she grinned, all of a sudden, trying to stifle a helpless hiccup of a giggle.

OH. OH. He was supposed to lift her veil and kiss her now! Mamoru gave her a sheepish look and pulled up the veil and leaned down, and just in time, she whispered, "You're supposed to say 'I do' first."


	4. sweet

She always knew it would happen someday. She didn't know how or when, and she wasn't *positive* because she'd changed things with her determination, her *choice* to keep Chaos in the universe, her *choice* to live together with everyone as they were--

\--but she knew, because in her heart of hearts, she also knew that it always came down to her if they weren't there. If he wasn't there. She'd proven over and over that she could, and would, handle things with only the memory of love, the memory of her friends' strength-- of his strength. 

"...but this is too soon," breathed Neo Queen Serenity, kneeling once more at the edge of the Galaxy Cauldron, hands stretched out and heart in her throat, seized, like an ice cube or a stopped watch or an engine with sugar in it. "It's--" her voice rose to a shriek, hoarse and bloodcurdling and impossibly loud as she stood up swiftly and unsteadily, "TOO SOON! MAMO-CHAN! COME BACK! YOU CAN COME BACK! You-- you..."

Sailor Moon grabbed her mother's arm, tear-streaked face fierce, and yanked her back. Her voice was raw as she shouted, "He WENT IN to GET ME--" And then it broke and she clung to her mother and dragged her further from the edge. "Mama-- U-Usagi. I begged him not to, I told him it was wrong to take your choice away, that you might choose him instead of me, and P-papa was so sweet, he held me and he said 'Small Lady, you are our star, and it would be wrong to make your mother choose. Besides, if anyone can figure out how to bring me back after this, it's the two of you.' So! Y-you see, Mama, now we have a job to do-- even if it means we have to wait until he's reborn again and finds you again, because-- because he always finds you!"

Serenity held her daughter close and wept, and her words were incoherent at first, muffled nonsense things because her heart was drowning out her mind. She sank to her knees, pulling her pink bunny-haired best-girl down with her, and that girl-- who always wanted so badly to grow up-- wished they were children again. But as close as they were to the Cauldron, she didn't wish it very loud.

The sweet voice of Guardian Cosmos floated towards them, and her tiny glimmering figure drew close. "If you go in, you will find him, as he remains in hope. If you go in together, you may have a chance at the three of you--"

She didn't get a chance to finish. 

The queen and the princess had already jumped.


	5. puzzle

She knew he still needed time to himself, all alone without anybody near him, even her. She'd read all the books on 'care and feeding of your introvert' that she could find, and she knew it was nothing personal. Even if she remembered Endymion never withdrawing from her when she was Serenity, not only did Mamoru have a very different childhood and early adolescence, but Endymion could even have been an introvert and she just wasn't around him enough to see him hiding from court by locking himself in the bathroom.

But there was a puzzle about it. Sometimes, when he was having alone time and he was in his study or on the balcony, she could hear him talking. Talking with pauses, like he was on the phone, having a conversation. Except not having his phone on him was definitely a part of the shut-the-world-out thing, and she could *see* it there, on the table. It wasn't *every* time, just sometimes.

This time, she heard him laugh, an affectionate thing that sometimes she heard him use with Mako or Ami, but mostly was just with her. Usagi abruptly burned with curiosity, with the desire to burst in on him and ask what was so funny-- but this was the one thing she never broke; if he wanted her with him after a little while, he always called her, or came to find her. But she wanted to know! And he was on the balcony. And it had *glass doors*.

Tiptoeing with a lot more subtlety than she'd had as a teenager, Usagi snuck over to those doors to peek down the length of the balcony to see what her fiance was laughing at, and stopped cold.

He was glowing, just faintly, and four figures were out there with him-- figures she could barely see, but who had very, very familiar shapes. And capes. They all had capes, like they used to back when they were his guardians instead of their enemies. And they were so easy with him, just-- just chilling out, with one of them leaning back against the rail with his arms crossed, one of them sitting on it, one of them perched on the arm of the chair next to him, and one of them sprawled on the porch swing. She stared, and swallowed, and nearly retreated--

\--but then stayed to watch with a hunger she didn't have the concentration to analyze. Every moment of their interaction, of Mamoru's easy, relaxed body language that he had with her but never with anyone else, every expression on his face... and every bit of the love that radiated from him and overlaid the grief she could practically taste.

She studied him, and then saw his hands, handling stones-- no, gems, she realized. And she remembered Hotaru presenting Chibiusa's Senshis' spheres to her, once upon a time, and a flare of mingled aggravation and determination blazed up within her.

She'd just have to interrupt.

Flinging open the balcony door and striding out, she pulled her justice pose out and pointed at the boys with one hand on her hip and a righteous scolding on her face before she even opened her mouth.

They all looked like deer in headlights and it was all she could do not to giggle at them. No: she doubled down on the stern and declared, "Boys who keep dumb secrets from their fiancees about things that make them very sad are obstructing the path of love and justice! We can fix this easy, Mamoru-baka! Go make beds! Then we'll resurrect all you nobly suffering dummies!"

They all stared at her, and she stomped her foot. "NOW!"

Mamoru scrambled.


	6. charismatic

If you asked Mamoru, he'd say Usagi was the charismatic one. If you asked Usagi, she'd say it was obviously Mamoru. They each had their reasons, of course -- Mamoru's logic was that Usagi was the one who made friends within two minutes of meeting anyone, that her Senshi would follow her into hell and out the other side, that she charmed government officials and social servants and church ladies and hardened criminals alike. Usagi's logic was that Mamoru was kind and decisive and regal and knew the proper words to convince government officials and social servants and church ladies and hardened criminals of what needed to be done, and then worked alongside them tirelessly to follow through, and they kept listening to him.

They both defined it as strength of character.

Neither of them were convinced they themselves had it.

"You're a couple of idiots," Minako said affectionately as she sat back in her chair and kicked her feet up to rest on the edge of the table, then smacked her gum in precisely the way that made Usagi giggle and Mamoru roll his eyes. "Don't you see this isn't a zero fun game?"

Usagi scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, leaning on Mamoru's shoulder and hiccupping, and Mamoru put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. But Usagi wanted to know: "What's a zero fun game? You're saying it like it's a thing instead of just chess."

"Zero sum," Mamoru corrected absently, already distracted from the depressing self-castigation by the play of light on Usagi's golden hair, shot through with strands of gleaming platinum white. "It's an economics and game theory thing. It means that there's a limited amount of stuff to go around, and one party can only have more stuff if the other party has less stuff. What Minako-chan means is that we're both charismatic and one of us being it doesn't mean the other lacks it."

Minako gave Mamoru double finger-guns and a wink.

"Of course, it's not actually representative of the problem at hand, because charisma not being a limited, measurable resource has nothing to do with the fact that you're a much better public face because people instantly love y--"

Minako glared at Mamoru, and raised her voice to talk over him. "You both have different strengths. But you're both public faces and you're going to have to get over it. You already KNOW that together you can accomplish a lot more than you can separately. You wouldn't shut up about it after the Dead Moon shit, Usagi-chan. And priest-boy basically crowned you both. And this is the unification of two ancient planetary kingdoms and you're both monarchs in your own right, so seriously, stop whining and being dumb losers with no self-esteem and hero worship complexes about your other halves."

She dropped her feet to the floor with a thump just as Mamoru was trying to figure out whether to look indignant or ashamed, and then she stood up and put her hands on the tabletop, leaning over it to blow a huge bubble and pop it in their faces. "I don't shut up, I grow up, and when I look at you sometimes I want to strangle you," she said with all the angry affection in the world. "Unfuck your brain-shit and get ready for the dual public coronation. Have a lot of sex on the roof in henshin if it helps. You've got two days."


	7. eloquence

"Don't you see?" asked Sailor Moon, kneeling in front of her collapsed and embittered enemy, both of them exhausted from the fight-- but Moon was earnest and tender, and Tuxedo Kamen was down on one knee beside her, hand on her shoulder. She reached to take the garishly dressed woman's hands gently, and poured out her heart in a stream of words -- words of forgiveness, words of encouragement, words offered in honest friendship and hope and belief.

"I understand. I understand why you hurt, and the evils that you had to bear were unforgivable, but if you turn around and hurt other people in turn, it doesn't erase what was done to you and it doesn't really make you feel better -- it only lets more darkness into your heart. You can get lost in it, and forget why you cared in the first place..." 

She stopped being able to speak, tears rolling down her pretty face and voice getting caught in her throat as she squeezed the woman's hands. 

Tuxedo Kamen picked up where his partner, the love of his life, trailed off. His voice was calm and compassionate, and he let his hand drop from Moon's shoulder so he could take off his gloves, dropping them on the ground. "Sometimes in life, it seems as though everything is empty and without hope, as though everything you've lost can never be regained, and nothing can heal the hurt and pain you've had to suffer. Sometimes it's easy to think that no one will help you, that no one cares. But--"

Now, he placed one hand on Moon's shoulder again, and leaned forward next to her to place the other hand over their joined ones. 

That contact opened a world of warm golden sunlight and bedrock stability, of silvery forgiving moonlight in the darkness, of true empathy, of shared pain, of equal loss and the hope that could counteract it. The two heroes shared these with the woman, whose bitterness and misery drained away as they showed her how they felt-- how they felt even about her, how they believed everything they said, how they hadn't had it easy either, and how love and trust and honesty were really things that worked.

She began to cry silently, just looking at them.

"Do-- do you really think anyone else would forgive me?" she finally asked, tired and small, and their light began to fill her, give her strength and peace.

"Yes," said Sailor Moon with a wet little laugh. "Use your knowledge and your abilities to fix, first, what you've done-- and then to begin fixing the evils that other people have to suffer. You'll be loved for it, and finally--"

"--finally, you'll learn to love yourself," finished Tuxedo Kamen, rueful and quiet. "It's a long journey, but everything you do *for* others, instead of against them, will make it easier to understand that giving happiness to others makes you happier, too. Everyone makes mistakes. Don't dwell on them-- accept that they've happened, and move on, and do better."

"If you can make just one innocent person safe from the hardships you've suffered, it makes your heart lighter. Enough of these, and your heart will soar," finished Moon, and pulled at the woman's hands to help her up. 

A flare of warm golden light from the three joined hands, and the woman found she had the energy and strength to move on her own, and her aches melted away with her misery, and her grief became a clean thing, raw but honest. Sitting up, she collapsed into their arms, and finally mourned for what she'd lost-- with hope for what she could accomplish with a pure heart.


	8. shimmer

It was very dark. Mamoru kept himself from saying out loud that they might be eaten by a grue, because Usagi might think there were actual grues there that might eat them, and she was already terrified, as evidenced by the death grip she had on him. She was trying so hard not to cry loudly, though, that he couldn't be impatient-- he just held on to the ledge and refused to think about how tired his arms were getting.

There was a quiet sniffle next to his ear, and then Usagi whispered, "If I-- if I henshin it'll make some light-- and we can see how far down it is--" And then she choked on her own words and gripped him more tightly, and he struggled to breathe.

"Air," he gasped. She loosened her grip slightly, and he said, "It's a good idea. Maybe there's another handhold I'm missing."

"But then we'd see how far down it is!" she wailed, and he grimaced, because that was in his ear too. 

"So don't look down," he told her reasonably. "What about your pen? You can make it an umbrella like you did that one time."

"I dropped it," she said miserably, then whispered, "Moon cosmic power, make up."

First there was a shimmer, and then the full disco lights and music display and tangle of ribbons and fantastic weightlessness started up, and Mamoru looked down--

\--and let go.

Sailor Moon's feet landed lightly on the cavern floor as her henshin completed, and as the light faded, she could see Mamoru looking at her with untold depths of affection... and rubbing his arms. "Ow," he whispered. "Let's try not to dangle over any more one-foot drops."


	9. bell

She didn't even have toast in her mouth. 

Mamoru's classes had been cancelled for the day because there'd been some kind of gas leak in his high school's basement, discovered early in the morning, and everyone had gotten a call or text and been told their assignments would be up on Google Classroom. Naturally, he was up and out early anyway, intent on getting his classwork done for the day before his third cup of coffee at Crown.

He shouldn't linger, he thought to himself, he should go and get it done and then see what he could do for the rest of the day. Alone at home doing his work and then just reading-- not even reading outside on a park bench, where there was visible and audible proof of other people existing in the world-- was appealing sometimes, but it'd lost some of its shine. He used to live for the times he'd have quiet, with no one even near him, but since he'd been living on his own he actually treasured school as a wall between himself and solipsistic dissociation.

He shouldn't linger, he should go to the Crown and talk to Motoki and get coffee and listen to the happy buzz of voices in the background, feel the warmth of other people's affection toward each other, filling the air with something other than hostility or misery or loneliness.

But, he'd grown willing to admit, there was a particular warmth he craved, loud and fleeting as it might be.

She hadn't been on the bus, so she was bound to be on foot, careering around corners and bolting down the sidewalks like a bat out of hell. He shouldn't linger, but he knew it was a matter of time. He heard her feet against the pavement before he saw her, and then he saw her and she looked tired and panicked and she didn't even have toast in her mouth, and her cat was running behind her with her lunch bag in its mouth, and he stepped around a corner so she wouldn't see him and swerve--

\--and then he checked his pocketwatch and felt guilty. She was already going to be late. He'd make her later. He shouldn't interfere. But-- he didn't have to be at school; if he accompanied her and went to her teacher and explained it was his fault, maybe she wouldn't get detention, and he'd be able to see her after school... and she was going to be late anyway, so maybe this was good, maybe--

Mamoru opened a book and stepped out from around the corner, his timing so perfect that she slammed into him instantly, dropping her bookbag; her cat did an impossible backflip and landed behind them, and Mamoru dropped his book and his padded laptop bag and backpedaled a couple of paces to soak her momentum and prevent the two of them from landing hard on the concrete.

Warm. She was flailing and apologising and stepping back and bending to pick everything up, but he reached to lightly put his hands on her shoulders, steadying and solid, and he couldn't help laughing. They were a block from Juuban Middle School, so the bell was clearly audible, and she heard it and actually processed who she'd run into and lit up with rage. "JERK! Don't laugh at me! And don't try and tell me it was my fault even if I was apologising, you were READING while you were WALKING!"

"It was definitely my fault," Mamoru said when she paused to take a breath, and she stopped abruptly, derailed.

"What?"

"It was my fault," Mamoru repeated, studying her face up close. "I stepped in your path and I obviously wasn't looking. And then you helped me collect my papers because I was upset, and then you heard the bell and said you were going to be late, so I offered to come with you to class and explain to your teacher, so you wouldn't get in trouble."

"But-- we didn't do any of those things--" Usagi protested, bewildered, tugging on one of her pigtails while Luna dropped the lunchbag and sized up Mamoru's ankles and their likelihood of possessing some kind of anti-cat-bite armor.

"But if I'd been upset and dropped all my papers, you would have stopped to help me even if it made you late, wouldn't you?" Mamoru asked quietly, a raw kind of intense honesty in his face that set Usagi even further off balance.

"Y-yes," she stammered, eyeing him, trying to read what was going on behind his face and starting to blush.

"So let me take care of this for you, since I'm the one who's inconvenienced you this morning," Mamoru said, almost-- *almost*-- pleading.

"Um. Okay," said Usagi, looking at him sidelong as he stepped back to bend and pick all of their things up. He handed her her case, then stood, and smiled at her, and for a second she forgot how to breathe.

She remembered when Luna jumped up on her shoulder and licked her ear with a scratchy tongue, then whispered as soon as Mamoru turned away, "Don't be like this, Usagi! You can't trust him!"

Without looking, Mamoru said, "It's rude to whisper behind my back, Miss Cat."

Luna's ears went flat back and her tail curled around the back of Usagi's neck, and she crouched in irritation and uneasiness.

Usagi knew she'd get an earful later, but she was willing to bet yen to yogurt parfaits that watching Mamoru charm Miss Haruna would be worth the price of admission.

She just wasn't prepared for how jealous it made her.


	10. sylph

The crown prince sat down heavily and started taking off his armor, overheated and aggravated. He was alone; he didn't *like* being alone. "Kunzite," he said to the air, "I know you'd just give me a Look that says 'suck it up' in every concievable way. Neph, I know you'd make fun of me, and I know you wouldn't mean it, and I'd laugh too. Jadeite, how dare you look disappointed in me, I haven't given up yet, I'm just complaining. Zoisite, I'm about to tackle you off your high horse because of *course* you would get sweaty if you had to hike in gods-damned armor..."

He trailed off and sighed, dropping his head into his hands after letting the last piece of armor fall. "So why don't we take it as rote that these things happened, and I'll just-- I'll just sit here and eat lunch, and talk to myself, and..."

Why bother finishing the sentence when there was nobody around to listen?

It was a rite of passage, kept since time immemorial. Find and charm a sylph, a faerie of the air, and spend a night in her company; if you should fail, you will have at least learned something important, something necessary to rule the whole of the Earth. Endymion privately held that not only was that incredibly rude if sylphs even existed, but that no one in his entire ancestry had ever actually met one (if they were, in fact, real) nevermind bedded one. It was absurd. And rude. And probably actually just a snipe hunt to teach young princes a lesson in patience and fraud.

The breeze played with his hair and lifted it from the back of his neck by stages, cooling him, drying his perspiration and rustling the leaves in the trees nearby. The clearing he'd picked to take a break in was lovely, dappled forest floor dancing with sunlight and shadow, bubbling brook hidden somewhere in the low foliage beyond the closest copse of trees. He could see the sky in patches above, and it was clear blue except for some scudding clouds.

Endymion squinted. Some scudding high cirrus clouds and one among them that'd been there all day, frosty and high and thin-- but though it was in the same place, and had more or less the same general shape, it seemed thicker. Lower. More substantial. Almost as though there were a lone altostratus hovering in the sky, not blocking the sunlight. It was unreasonable behavior for a cloud, and the prince scrubbed at his eyes and looked again, and it was high and airy once more.

Clearly, he needed a nap. He bundled up his cloak to use as a pillow and took out a knife, which he kept in one hand, and lay down on his side; his other hand stretched out along the ground in front of him, and he dug his fingers in slightly, casting part of his awareness into the ground. Nothing that walked on land or climbed in the trees could take him by surprise; the earth would wake him if anything came close.

He drifted off, sunshine warming him and breeze playfully tugging at his hair and clothes, the sounds of the forest around him.

When the prince awakened, it was bright, but the world was leached of color in the bright light of the full moon. A mist was all around him, but he was warm and dry and so, so very comfortable. He felt as if he were dreaming yet, though his eyes were open; his cloak couldn't be this soft, the ground he *knew* wasn't this soft, and--

\--his hand was no longer half-buried in the earth, and he could feel someone else's amusement.

He froze.

A delicate, airy hand smoothed his hair back from his face, and a sweet voice cloaked in a sussurus of gentle wind murmured, "Steady, Prince. I mean no harm. You are very beautiful, and your eyes are the color of the sea from the sky, and I have longed to view them more closely."

Endymion turned to gaze upwards, rolling half on his back, and saw an ephemeral girl-- an apparition of air and mist and moonlight, yet solid enough to hold his head in her lap. She was certainly more beautiful than she said he was, but it was her eyes that caught and held him. They were kind, and they were ancient, and they were very, very young-- and they were filled with deep affection.

"Ah," she said, searching his eyes, drinking them in. He felt only marveling from her, admiration-- and a longing to be closer. That affection he saw, mirrored in her feelings. A deep curiosity being both slowly sated and driven to greater heights... and then she spoke again, and laughed, and the sound of it was like the wind in the trees. "I am who you seek, am I not? Do you wish to bed me?"

His eyes widened. "No!" he protested immediately, starting to sit up, and then got flustered. "I mean-- yes! I mean-- it's a very rude quest, we've never met before and I would want to court you first, get to know you..." he finished, lamely.

Her hands fell to her lap and she laughed again, and this time it was delighted and loud. "Oh good," she finally got out, breathless, her hand to her chest. "Will you? Because I've been watching over you and I want to *keep* you, but I didn't know how you were, really, in person, and if that's how you feel, I love you even more."

Endymion was caught flatfooted. This was all happening very fast, and he didn't want it to stop, even if he couldn't quite get a solid grip on what exactly *was* happening. "What's your name?" he asked after a second of fishing desperately for something to say that wasn't stupid.

"Serenity," said the sylph, and held out her hands, actually grinning at him, wide and bright. "Let me show you my sky, and then you can show me your land."

The prince's eyes were wide with wonder, and he took her hands without hesitation.


End file.
